The mule deer leaps from the sage along the roadside, illuminated in my headlights for an instant before the grill of my speeding semi broadsides her with a muffled whump. Reflexively, I check my driver-side mirror and in the dingy light of the High Desert Dawn I see the carcass burst like a wet, red balloon from beneath my trailer tires. It’s Sunday morning, 6:30 a.m., and aside from my Freightliner, U.S. 97 is devoid of anything but a fleeting case of bad luck for which I’m no more to blame than the deer is.
Common as it is on these outland roads, the doe’s death is just one more pain in my already throbbing head. What my dispatcher termed “a straight shot from Portland to Redmond” became 12 icy hours with stops in Sisters, Prineville, Sunriver, Bend, Redmond and Terrebonne. To further compound matters I have a two-day hangover parked in my skull, the remnants of a festive Friday full of old friends from out of town and a boatload of bourbon and beer around a backyard-bonfire. Like every hangover I’ve ever suffered, my mind goes into low-power mode and riffs off a subconcious-loop of song-lyrics and senseless snatches of conversation from the night before—Does this piece of wood remind you of Tom Jones?—You know he’s Welsh?—It’s not unusual to be chopped by anyone!—Are there many trees left in Wales?—Somebody should ask that vegan-chick we knew who worked for Greenpeace…
I’ve already spent Saturday stupefied by sleep and acetaminophen, Tom Jones crooning in the back of my head as the specter of a vegan-chick from decades past chastised me for my ignorance of environmentalism. Despite a full-day of couch-bound recovery my 11:30 p.m. alarm sounded all too soon, reminding me just how out of practice I am at celebrating on a professional level. Despite that being a positive step, it proved no consolation as I crawled bleakly from bed, drank a quart of Gatorade and a pot of coffee, and headed shakily out the door to drag my trailer through the long and lonely hours with only lounge-lyrics to keep me company. To be certain, the last thing I needed is a broken headlight and a tractor enveloped in entrails.
Fifteen minutes after the deer’s demise, I hit the cheap, neon smear of Madras and gear down into the J&L Truckstop. The lot teems with Kenworths and cattle-trailers but I spy a lucky slot, weasel my Freightliner alongside an empty stock-trailer and climb down into the bitter morning breeze. I instantly forget my headlight as the scent of fried food wafts from the restaurant attached to the Fuel Station, my hangover morphing into a huge and empty hunger.
It’s blessedly warm inside and I grab a stool at the counter, peruse a discarded issue of The Truck Paper—as if the purchase of a Peterbilt might be in my plans—and glance over the clientele: Skinny men and heavy women in greasy jeans and quilted flannel speak in quiet tones, cutlery clinking as they hunch in vinyl booths and shovel away shapeless masses of food. Ball-caps advertise transmission shops and feed-lots. Cowboy boots clunk as customers come and go. And though I expected the auditory-anguish of the New Country Music so favored in Central Oregon, my ears are incongruently assaulted by Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline,” setting up another echo that’s bound to torture my mind for miles to come.
Presently the waitress arrives, a muscular matron in her mid ‘fifties who clearly runs the show with her omnipresent coffee-pot and careworn face. She plunks down a heavy cup and fills it with a practiced dip of her work-hardened wrist.
“Yew wan’ the spacial?” she twangs, nasal in a way that belongs to nobody west of Warm Springs.
I consider asking what’s up with Neil Diamond but she drones on, “Beskits an’ gravee, tew aigs, cawfee fer fahve-nahnny-nahn.”
I’m in no mood for meat and I grunt my approval and reach for the smoldering coffee. It’s a schizophrenic brew, as weak in flavor as it is high in caffeine, redolent of a mouthful of burnt-toast and a nose full of cheap cocaine. I lean back and take in the faux-Navajo tapestries, down-home drapes with printed lace-edges, pre-scuffed laminate floor—depressing attempts at a culture as over-wrought as the drooping mustaches and butt-tight Wranglers favored by the livestock-drivers.
Neil Diamond gives way to the Bee Gee’s “Night Fever” and a pre-made platter plunks down in front of me, covered in a steaming gelatinous grey-matter approximating milk-gravy. I locate biscuits that must be three-parts Bondo to one-part flour and bring a quivering fork-load to my mouth, stunned nearly to cardiac-arrest by the staggering sodium content. I hit the coffee again, upend the pepper shaker over the mélange and manage to ingest two of the four biscuits along with a collateral portion of something yolk-like and rubbery.
After an interminable interval interspersed with a number from Captain and Tennile, I drain my coffee, slap a ten on the counter and beeline for the adjoining mini-mart to see about some Maalox and a new headlight. As if on cue, Hall and Oates come over the airwaves, serenading my exit with, “I Can’t Go For That.”
You boys got that I right, I figure, uncapping the medicine and taking a deep, chalky pull as I head toward my blood-spattered semi. I’ll be paying my penance all the way to Portland and though there’ll be nary a New Country song involved, nobody can say how long Hall and Oates will hang around.
And that’s one thing I am to blame for.
hotdamndave 